AMD V's Intel

Polonious

Guys, just wondering if someone can tell me if there is much of a performance difference between AMD and Intel chips. I'm looking at upgrading my PC and there is an obvious price difference in the two, just wondering if the same goes for performance...?

Saruman

The Eternal question.... asked yet again...

I think Intels are supposed to be faster these days.. i prefer AMD's usually but have not tried intel in a long time.

Col_Loki

Would be more an AMD man 2, although im really tempted by the new 800FSB intels. Think if you are spending <€200 then AMD is the way to go, much more bang per buck. Over €200 and intel seem to hold the upper hand by a long shot, mainly due to Higher FSB & Running speeds which AMD seems to struggle to cope with. Both chips have there strong performance areas, its really not a easy question is it :rolleyes: !!

Polonious

Na not really an easy one! The main reason I ask is because on Komplett they have a few upgrade kits and the difference between the two types (AMD, Intel) is about €200 give or take a few yo yo's... If there's not much difference performance wise then AMD is the way to go for me...

jesus_thats_gre

The current batch of Intel processors are more powerful than AMD, but are more expensive.

Some people argue that you pay for what you get and this in my opinion is certainly relevent at the moment. If you have the cash and want the best of the best, an Intel based P4 is the only way to go.

BKtje

It depends really what you will be using the system for.
If its for gaming Intel has a slight advantage (ie HT wont be useful for games) where as if you were using it for encoding and the likes an Intel would be much more worth the extra $$$.

Personally i go for AMD atm as im a gamer and the HT would go to waste a bit, however the 800FSB intels are still more powerful than their AMD counterparts even taking intoaccount that HT is next to useless (even detracts?) for games.

If for gaming: Buy and AMD and use the money ona top of the range GFX card.
If for encoding/general work: Get an intel

BabyEater

If its for gaming Intel has a slight advantage (ie HT wont be useful for games)

Assume you meant AMD instead of Intel there.

I would say that a 800fsb 2.4Ghz P4 will beat a 2400XP but for the same money that you spend on a 2.4GHz P4 you could buy an XP2800 which would outperform the 2.4GHz by a bit.
If you want to encode tho the Intel is still best .

It all depends on how much you want to spend and what you are using it for.

MrPinK

HT wont be useful for games

There aren't a lot of games that will take advantage of SMP/HT, but I suspect there'll be quite a few soon enough.

ozt9vdujny3srf

Although many will say toms hardware benchamarks are unreliable, the p4 2.4c (800fb) clearly outperforms even amd's top performer - the 3200+

THis would have to do with the DOubled fsb and HT. Certainly the p4's are the only chips that take full advantage of dual ddr at the moment.

Recently i bought a p4 2.6c of komplett after a lot of research. Certainly for high end systems intel are the way to go. AMD wise if you are going budget go for the barton 2500+, probably the best bang for buck that you'll get at the moment. I wouldnt touch any of the more expensive athlons.

BKtje

IAssume you meant AMD instead of Intel there

No i meant a slight advantage as they are more expensive but are better performance. Not really worth it for just gaming tho imo. GFX card would be more important.
Really depends what your going to use it for.

ASTRACLUB

Go for intel as P4 is good for games and other video realted software also

P4, i would prefer

regards
divya

jesus_thats_gre

3DMark 2001 and 2003 are both fairly standard ways of measuring the performance of your PC with regard to gaming.

It is fairly obvious that a P4 3.0GHz with a FX5900 is the best performer. It quite abviously beats the XP3200, but lets face it, even the P4 2.4 beats it.


With regard to tomshardware, what they may not be gospel anymore, but there is still some basis to their findings.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030623/p4_3200-09.html



In the Quake 3 Open GL test, the P4 was over 100 frames per second better than the XP at 640x480.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030623/p4_3200-07.html

po0k

But who the feck would play Q3 at that res on any of those machines? Or any game for that matter?

BKtje

and it also doesnt give a very accurate account as the higher the res the fps difference may widen/shrink.

jesus_thats_gre

Regardless what game it is, the engine has become a fairly well established method of testing a machines performance. UT2003 seems to be making moves to replace that.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030623/p4_3200-08.html

Check that link for benchmarks with both UT2003 and Splinter Cell.

WhiteWashMan

number crunching processors may be really expensive and really cool, but at the end of the day, you are better off putting together a system that is faster overall.

i would prefer an AMD 2400+ and some really fast memory and a good motherboard over an overpriced pentium and limited memory.
and a good graphics card will take a lot of the cpu number crunching anyway.

and if you want a really kick ass games machine, get an SGI

so, my humble advice is go for the cheaper good performing AMD and use the extra cash to purchase a good gfx card and some CAS2.0 memory and a nice motherboard.

of course, its all redundent if you dont have dsl anyway

Polonious

Whitewashman, the general feeling amongst the replies seems to be the same as yourself. So I've made up my mind to do pretty much what you said. AMD 2400+ (or similar) and a gfx card. Afterall i'm not trying to send a rocket to the moon or anything fancy like that...

po0k

Get an odd-stepping chip if you can (should have an odd numbered frequency too, ie 1.733Ghz etc.)
They are generally more overclockable, having done the bridge mod.

Gerry

hmm, this is rather strange. There seems to be some problem with the p4 being 100 fps faster at quake3 at low res. The whole point of the low res test is to show how well the cpu, memory and motherboard work as a combination. The p4's fsb and good utilisation of dual ddr help it here. Its a very useful benchmark. It shows differences that are normally blurred by having the graphics card as the bottleneck.
Bk-dzr, if we stick a tnt1 in every machine, sure my amd-k6-2 will be nearly as fast as a p4 2.4ghz at quake3 in high res. Thats what you are saying.
In the tomshardware benchmarks, it seems that the 2.4ghz p4 is faster than the 2800mhz amd chip, removing any reason I would have for buying it.
The p4 2.4 ghz is far more overclockable than the xp2800 or xp3200. Of course if you were going for a good increase, you'd buy the 533mhz bus 2.4b.

The Brigadier

My 2.4b runs quite happily at 2.97GHz without any special cooling
(ie watercooling or the like)

It is a good value chip that ramps up nicely...